"Consolation"

ITHOUT prejudice, it was the gown which first attracted Meredith's attention. It was the simplest of all possible gowns, a black-velvet reminiscence of an old daguerreotype, drooping delicately from the shoulders in short, puffed sleeves; it had a trim, pointed little bodice, and a gently flaring little skirt, and not one woman in a thousand would have remembered to wear it without jewelry and to avoid any artificial contrast of color. The girl who was dancing in it, however, was an artist; she had n't even stooped to the banality of a red rose for her corsage, and she had done her hair to suit the period of her costume. She was so pretty that Meredith, after enjoying the sheer luxury of staring at her, refused to rest until he had unearthed a friend who could present him; she was so ineffably sweet and lovable that after he had met her and talked with her and danced with her to the swing of "Butterfly," which was the prime obsession of that Pinehurst season, he could hardly credit the obvious reality that they were both alive and abiding. This was in December, and by the middle of the following month he was head over heels in love with her. The delay was chiefly due to the fact that, unless it rained, he saw Miss Winsted only during the evenings and on Sundays.

In the meantime he had gone resolutely about his serious business in Pinehurst, which was to compensate himself for a four-years' hiatus in his golfing career and to renew his quondam skill at the game to which he was passionately devoted. He had two objectives, the St. Valentine's and the spring tournaments, and he went about his self-schooling for them as though his life depended on the outcome. For three hours every morning he had practised diligently, beginning with two-foot putts, and working methodically backward to jigger, iron, clerk, spoon, and driver. Thirty minutes of each forenoon he had spent doggedly in sand traps, seeking now for distance, now for accuracy on short chips to a neighboring green, now for simple outs from difficult lies. After lunch he had played a painstaking round alone, preferably over the No. 2 course, with its hundred and ninety ambushed hazards, and had struggled religiously to erase from his mind any record of his medal score. He did n't want to be elated or distressed by his performances; he wanted to bring about a logical development of his game until it approximated his undergraduate standard. He was interested in the present only as a stepping-stone to the future. Not oftener than twice a week he had played against a flesh-and-blood opponent, and on the next day he had revisited the same course, and practised faithfully all those shots on which he had made mistakes. The result of this sound preparation was that Meredith, without achieving any notoriety, was habitually under eighty on his solitary rounds; but partly because he had so relentlessly effaced himself, and partly because his collegiate reputation had n't preceded him to the Carolinas, he was still registered at the club-house in Class B, which, being interpreted according to the equable Pinehurst system, required him to qualify not lower than the second flight in any tournament or be disfranchised. Not having a national rating, and not having played in previous events at Pinehurst, he was n't eligible to Class A, which would have compelled him to make the first division or to withdraw; and this pleased him inordinately, because he knew that when he came to match-play his partners would expect Class B golf from him, and would n't get it.

He was bitterly disappointed to discover that Miss Winsted, although she rode and swam and played tennis, and spent the majority of her waking hours out of doors, did n't comprehend even the terminology of golf. Furthermore, she displayed some slight antipathy to it. Golf, she said, might be a very nice game,—indeed, it probably was,—but she herself liked the more active sports. She had observed that whenever you scratch a golfer, you find a chatterbox, and she could n't understand why people should talk all night to explain why they had played badly all day. When an afternoon of tennis was over, it was over; when the hounds had caught the fox, every one but the fox was satisfied, and in the evening there was either dancing or bridge. Meredith, of course, was an exception, and she admired him for his versatility of conversation; but even in his case she could n't promote a thrill at his report of a miraculous recovery from the Bermuda grass, and his story of a three on the tenth hole left her as unmoved as though he had merely purled two and knitted two. Still, despite the vital defect, he fell in love with her. And this proves that she was superlative.